


i loved and i loved and i lost you

by miidniight



Series: Dream SMP Oneshots [4]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Prison, Sad Ending, Sapnap Needs a Hug (Video Blogging RPF), Villain Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28993008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miidniight/pseuds/miidniight
Summary: “I will always care about you,” he whispered, something desperate and pained and reaching (he was always, always reaching) for any sort of glimpse of the man that had once been his older brother within this husk of a person sat in front of him, “Even if you don’t care about me.”“Caring,” Dream murmured back, not even bothering to pick his eyes up from where he was watching himself draw meaningless shapes on his cell floor, “Is a dangerous game.”---Tommy wasn't the first person to visit Dream.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF)
Series: Dream SMP Oneshots [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018798
Comments: 9
Kudos: 93





	i loved and i loved and i lost you

**Author's Note:**

> title is from hurts like hell by fleurie

It was too quiet.

It had been for a long time.

Sleep and Sapnap had never been the best of friends (too many thoughts chasing themselves around his head like a dog after its own tail), but ever since George had been dethroned it was as if he and sleep had become mortal enemies. They were the same ends of a magnet, negative charges repelling against each other until they were so far apart one could hardly see the other. These days, the only time Sapnap fell asleep was when he passed out from pure exhaustion, his body simply unable to keep going.

He and Geoge both did.

Sapnap rolled from his back onto his side, eyes sweeping over the slumbering (and snoring, holy shit) form of George on the bed across from him. Even in the darkness, he could see the furrow of his friend’s brow and the deep, dark streaks under his eyes, eyelashes dragging through purple as they fluttered fitfully.

Slowly and softly, Sapnap pushed the blankets off of him, swinging his legs over the edge of his bed and standing. He swayed slightly at the sudden rush of blood as he made his way to George’s side, one hand reaching down slightly to brush a thumb over his agitated eyebrows—smoothing them out like wrinkles on paper. They fell at Sapnap’s gentle touch, as if a physical reminder that George should be relaxing was all he needed.

George murmured something unintelligible in his sleep as he shifted, flopping forward onto his stomach, one hand gripping onto the blanket he was tangled up in for dear life. For a moment, Sapnap stared a bit longer. There was an edge of peace, no matter how small, that seemed to creep up on George as he rested. It was rarely there these days, its space too busy being filled by wan, tight smiles, and laughs that never quite reached his eyes.

With a light sigh, Sapnap turned away, pointedly ignoring the bed on George’s right (ignoring the cold, empty space) as he padded out of the room quietly. 

The door shut behind him with a soft ‘ _click_ ’, cutting off George’s god awful chainsaw impression and plunging the rest of the house into silence.

Sapnap had never particularly enjoyed the quiet. He was a loud person by nature, boisterous and prone to filling up rooms on his own. The quiet left him time to think, time to process that he existed. Sapnap was a real, living person that breathed and bled and _felt_ —and that, for some reason, scared him more than he was willing to admit.

A needle of fear, sharp and mocking, weaved its way through his body, the cold spool of terror unraveling as it stitched his muscles into tensing. His breaths seemed too loud in the oppressive nothingness that filled what had once been his safe place (his _home_ ), as if they were waking a beast that was sleeping in the shadows. Sapnap shuddered at his own thoughts as he pushed through the haze of the void and made his way to the door. Hanging on hooks in the same order as always (Sapnap, George, Dream—the last to leave and the first to watch their backs) were their jackets. A hand reached for the black hoodie hanging on the first hook before it paused halfway, fingers falling ever so slightly as eyes turned to the last. There, beckoning in the most painfully nostalgic way possible, was an old hoodie of Dream’s. Not the bright neon one that had become his brand these days, but an older, dark green one. Sapnap inhaled shakily as he recalled laughter and arms decked in the jacket’s color wrapped around his shoulders.

Before he could second guess himself, Sapnap gently pulled it off the hook and tugged it over his head. It was a bit scratchy on the inside in the way hoodies became when they were well loved and washed often, but god, Sapnap had never felt anything softer. A distant smell, as if it was more memory than reality, lined the hoodie like velvet: pine trees and the burn of blaze powder. It was so deeply Dream that for a moment Sapnap choked on the lump that caught in his throat.

Clearing his throat as gently as possible, Sapnap plunged his hand forward into his inventory, searching for the item he was looking for, ensuring it was still there, before he let the magic fall and tugged his shoes on with slightly trembling hands.

(And ignored the empty spot next to George’s ridiculous blue high tops where a pair of ugly black sneakers that Sapnap constantly made fun of should have sat.)

The air outside was chilly and a gentle breeze made a shiver run down Sapnap’s spine. It felt akin to someone walking over his grave, as if the world was warning him not to walk any further—to turn around and go back to bed before this (honestly terrible) idea came to fruition.

But Sapnap was the king of bad ideas and would carve those words into his headstone as he stepped away from their house and made his way towards the Prime Path.

The trio’s house was a bit out of the way, tucked into a quiet part of a nearby forest away from the main section of the SMP. It was meant to be a sanctuary for the three of them, a quiet place to rest when the fighting was done and it was time to hang up their swords. Somehow, it had become their permanent residence, a place where the three of them could live, laugh, and love—or whatever the cheesy fucking saying was—without fear that Tommy or someone else would burst through their door with a declaration of war in one hand and a netherite axe in the other.

It was their home.

Well, it had been.

Ducking under a low-hanging branch, Sapnap tucked his hands in the pocket of the hoodie and saw the familiar outline of the Prime Path coming into view. It was a bit scuffed around these parts, the oak it had been built from replaced haphazardly with birch from where creepers had destroyed it. He hopped onto it with ease, flinching slightly at the way his footsteps echoed through the wood.

Night cast the SMP in an almost ethereal shadow. Dim, low burning torches winked at him occasionally, scattered across the ground by whoever had been last through this bit. The innocent thought of stars that fell from the sky crossed Sapnap’s mind briefly as a small smile quirked his lips up in the corners.

The corners of Skeppy and Bad’s mansion edged into Sapnap’s view, the white gleam significantly reduced in the wave of darkness that had swamped the SMP. As he got closer, Sapnap furrowed his brows in confusion. Pillars topped by lit netherrack framed the mansion’s entrance, as well as random piles of dirt blocking every door to the inside. He rounded the corner and felt the sudden weight that pulled at his body. Sluggishly raising his arms, Sapnap waved them around and found he could move just fine, but the thought of doing too much of it simply made him feel tired.

Kind of ridiculous that Sam’s mining fatigue stretched all the way out here.

It did, however, explain the blocked doorways. Sapnap was sure that Tommy was pissing himself in laughter somewhere at the thought of Bad or Skeppy trying to get in and digging a third of the speed they usually would.

It was the black monstrosity behind their mansion that caught Sapnap’s attention, however.

The Prison, or Pandora’s Vault (the formal name that literally no one called it), was more than huge. It was breathtakingly, soul-shockingly _present_. It was a build that would go down in history as legendary—not for who it held, but simply because it _was_. The amount of time that Sam must have put into this was unreal.

Despite hating it with every ounce of his body, Sapnap couldn’t help but stand in awe.

The jump from the path to the ground was a bit of a tall one, and he landed with an ‘ _oomf_ ’, ignoring the way his legs and feet stung at the action. The grass was practically silent compared to the path, and Sapnap despised the way it made his heart kick up a notch. A whistling wind that blew in the smell of sea salt and fear helped him forget the quiet and hurry towards the entrance building.

It was practically pitch black inside, and Sapnap felt his way around the walls, searching for the button that would alert Sam to his presence. After bonking into the unlit netherportal not once, but twice, he managed to find what he was looking for and pushed it down with his palm. It was cold beneath his touch and Sapnap had to fight back the shudder that threatened to wrack through his body.

“Bit late to be visiting, isn’t it, Sapnap?” Sam’s voice crackled over an intercom, scaring the crap out of Sapnap and making him jump ten feet into the air.

“I, uh,” he began, tripping over his words as his voice cracked from disuse and the emotion he had been keeping carefully buried inside, “I couldn’t sleep.”

For a moment, nothing. Then—

“You shouldn’t be here, Sapnap.”

“I want to see him.”

Sam sighed, and Sapnap could hear the pity dripping through his voice. “Sapnap, I really don’t think—”

“I _want_. To _see_ him.”

Sapnap waited one beat. Two. He opened his mouth to say it again, planning on simply spending the night there if Sam wanted him to wait until the morning, before the nether portal flickered to life to his left, the violet glow shimmering like the surface of an amethyst. Surprise jolted through Sapnap. He hadn’t expected Sam to give in that easily, but as he looked at himself in the wavering reflection of the portal, he wasn’t all that shocked if it had been because Sapnap looked like absolute shit.

The bags under his eyes were deeper than the pocket he currently had a hand tucked into, and God, Sapnap didn’t remember ever being this skinny. He took a deep breath in, ignoring the way it shook, before he exhaled and stepped into the purple haze, closing his eyes as his vision swam and head spun.

When he reopened them again he was enclosed in a small room, all quartz, blackstone, and obsidian. There was nothing but him and the portal, and for a moment, Sapnap was utterly bewildered. The intercom sparkled to life again, and he winced at the noise grating against his ears.

“Step back through the portal.”

“The fuck…?” Sapnap muttered to himself while he did as Sam said, blinking against the wave of dizziness that crashed over his head the second he stepped within the portal’s boundaries. After a moment of clearing the particles away from his face, Sapnap found himself stood in a tall room. Quartz columns stretched up to the ceiling above them and redstone lamps lit the floor beneath his feet.

“Holy shit, dude,” Sapnap said as he spun in a slow circle, the awe from earlier bleeding through his voice, “Holy shit.”

His gaze landed back on where Sam stood behind a counter, enchanted armor glimmering and trident in hand, wearing a less than pleased expression. There was a lectern in front holding a book that Sapnap could see from here was covered in text from top to bottom on multiple pages.

“I need you to sign this waiver before we can go any deeper into the prison,” Sam said, gesturing to the book with the hand that wasn’t hooked between his trident’s prongs. “It’s just to ensure that if anything happens, we at the prison can’t be blamed.”

“If I sign this, can I see Dream?”

“Well… yes, but—”

Sapnap didn’t wait to hear the rest of Sam’s sentence, making it over in two strides before picking up the quill and signing his name at the bottom of the right hand page with a dramatic flourish that would have made George roll his eyes. He heard a sigh before one green speckled hand reached over and flipped the page, pointing to where a line stared back at Sapnap mockingly. Without missing a beat, Sapnap signed again, with twice the theatrics, figuring that if he was going to break down in a few minutes, might as well have some fun now.

Sapnap snapped the book shut and held it out in Sam’s direction, watching as the man’s gaze flicked from him, down to the book, and back up again. He could practically see the internal debate playing out within Sam’s head, the twitch to his jaw and eye being the most prominent tells. After several moments of tense nothing, Sam shook his head, snatching the book and relenting with a terse, “Ten minutes.”

A weak but still victorious grin crept onto Sapnap’s face, and Sam seemed to soften slightly at the sight of it. He scanned Sapnap up and down as he stepped out from behind the counter before asking, “Do you have any items on you?”

Sapnap shook his head. He once again plunged his hand into his inventory, yanking out the single item and holding it up to a somewhat surprised looking Sam. “Just this. I figured he’d… he feels safer with it.”

Sam nodded. He must have hit a nearby button or something, because there was a ‘ _woosh_ ’ before a small gust of air hit Sapnap in the back. Turning to see what had made it, he was a bit gobsmacked to find a hallway that had been hidden behind blackstone. Sam gestured toward it with his trident, and Sapnap gave him a strange look before slowly making his way over. It led to a deadend room with nothing but a bed and a two-by-two square of sea lanterns.

Sam’s voice, once again, came to life over an intercom. “Set your spawn with the bed and then stand on the lanterns, please.”

Sapnap glared suspiciously around the room, looking for the speaker Sam was coming through. “That really sounds like you’re about to kill me, dude.”

“Have to make sure you don’t have anything on you.”

Grumbles of dissent flowed from Sapnap’s mouth as he touched the foot of the bed where the enchant runes were carved into the wood, feeling the slight tug that meant his spawn had been tied to a new area, and stood on the lanterns with his arms crossed. Sam walked into the room across from him, gave a cheery wave in Sapnap’s direction, and then pulled down on a lever he hadn’t even seen.

Barriers shot up from the ground, and Sapnap looked down in alarm.

“Sam, what the hell—” A splash potion of something ( _Harming_ , his mind helpfully supplied) hit him in the back, interrupting his sentence and sending him keeling over in agony. Shouting in pain, Sapnap cast one last bleary look in Sam’s direction before the world faded and the curtain fell closed.

He blinked as he found himself stood in another hallway, the floor once more filled with redstone lamps. A green figure donned in glowing armor came through a wall in front of him, and it took Sapnap a moment to register that it was Sam, most likely entering through yet another hidden door.

Of course _he_ didn’t have to die to progress.

“C’mere,” Sam called, waving one hand towards himself.

Cautiously, and on shaky legs, Sapnap made his way over, hands in tight fists at his sides in case Sam tried to pull another fast one on him. He stopped a few blocks away from where the other man stood, looking past him to see a gaping hole. Sam wiggled his eyebrows a few times before tugging (yet another) lever downwards. Flinching, Sapnap closed his eyes and waited to respawn again, opening them just a crack when he heard Sam give a low chuckle. Sapnap narrowed his eyes at Sam before he peered carefully over the edge, pulling back at the sight of lava below—and the bridge slowly rising out of it.

“Jesus, Sam,” Sapnap shook his head, watching the ascent through wide eyes, “You really didn’t hold back at _all_ with this place, did you?”

“No. If I had, there wouldn’t have really been any point in making it, now would there?”

“You’re insane.”

Sam simply gave another laugh as he led his way across the bridge.

Suffice to say, by the time they reached the final room before Dream’s actual cell, Sapnap had died once more (to Sam himself, no less!) and was dripping water off of the tips of his hair and onto his hoodie and the floor beneath him.

He turned around from where he was staring at a column of lava, sending Sam a withering glare. “I don’t think I have ever hated someone as much as I hate you right at this moment.”

“Turn around and face forward.”

“‘Turn around and face forward’,” Sapnap mocked, voice rising in pitch, “‘I’m Sam and I think just because I built this massive fucking prison, I get to do whatever I w—’”

The lava column dropped suddenly, all at once, filling whatever pit awaited below. Sapnap jumped back, avoiding the splashes that shot upwards despite the lingering effects of the fire resistance potion he knew were still running through his system. Tripping over his own feet, Sapnap fell onto his behind, hissing in pain at the landing and scrambling to move away from the edge.

And there, across from where he sat, was a giant obsidian dome. In the center, with his back to where Sapnap and Sam were, was a lone blonde figure in a dirtied, torn green hoodie over an orange jumpsuit, seated with his legs crossed.

Before Sapnap had a chance to process that he was there, he was _right there_ , the platform he was on began to move.

It glided smoothly across the lava beneath him, and with the way the heat was beginning to make him sweat, Sapnap knew if he fell, there would be no potions to save him. Smoke and ash flooded his nose the further across the fiery pond he got, and he watched with shock as pure netherite blocks shot up from the floor to keep Dream from jumping onto his platform the second it was close enough.

Not that he made any indication of moving.

Once Sapnap made it over, the stone slabs beneath him clicked into place, locking just long enough for him to stand and make his way onto the two block edge of obsidian that stood between certain death below and the netherite barrier of Dream’s cell. The instant he crossed (and Sapnap meant _the instant_ —his heel had astill been resting on space where the platform met the cell), the platform pulled back and the netherite blocks fell.

“I wasn’t expecting you for another day, Tommy.”

Sapnap’s breath caught in his throat. The familiar voice squeezed at his heart in a way that no one’s, not even George’s, ever could. That was the voice of his childhood, his teen years, and his brief adulthood all wrapped into one. That was the voice that had soothed him from nightmares night after night and slayed anyone who dared even looked at him wrong. That was the voice of his brother, and the chill that laced his tone was as unfamiliar as the voice of a stranger.

“I’m-I’m not Tommy,” Sapnap croaked, wincing at the way his voice broke around the words. Everything hurt in a way that he knew a potion of healing or regeneration couldn’t fix. They couldn’t glue the broken pieces of his heart back together or fill the gaping hole in his soul.

Dream shifted his head slightly, one green eye peering over his shoulder, surprise clear in his eyes. It widened after catching sight of Sapnap, the man in front of him turning fully to face his former brother. Sapnap drank in the sight of him like a thirsty man that had found a river. There were still healing scrapes across his face and purple streaks darker than a nether portal under dull, emerald eyes. His cheeks still looked full, thank God, but there was a lack of color that made some part of Sapnap’s brain ring warning bells.

“Sapnap. I… wasn’t expecting you.”

He scoffed, hurt fury making his eyes misty and his lungs constrict. “What, you just expected me not to come? Not to visit you? You might’ve fucked up, but I still love you man.”

Dream’s gaze flickered towards the ground, one pale, scarred hand leaving the confines of his hoodie to trace patterns on the ground. Sapnap followed the finger as it swerved up and down and curled around in a swirl as Dream replied, “You shouldn’t.”

Sapnap felt himself shatter. He split into a million different shards, Dream’s words hitting him like a hammer to glass. A high pitched whine rang through his ears, similar to the sound of a flatlining heart. It made sense, Sapnap supposed, that that was what he heard. In that moment, he could have sworn his heart had stopped beating. 

Sapnap had died when he heard Dream say that all he cared about were the discs.

Sapnap had died when he found out Dream had blown up the Community House.

And now, Sapnap had died when Dream said he shouldn’t love him.

How was it that Wilbur had always phrased it? Three canon deaths and you were done? Well Sapnap had hit his limit.

He was done.

“I will always care about you,” he whispered, something desperate and pained and reaching (he was always, always reaching) for any sort of glimpse of the man that had once been his older brother within this husk of a person sat in front of him, “Even if you don’t care about me.”

“Caring,” Dream murmured back, not even bothering to pick his eyes up from where he was watching himself draw meaningless shapes on his cell floor, “Is a dangerous game.” He finally glanced up, perhaps catching the stricken expression Sapnap wore without trying to hide, because his gaze fell back down to his hand. “My hoodie is too big on you.”

“Some of us aren’t six-foot-fucking-three.”

Dream smirked at that, the very edge of his mouth turning upwards. “Why did you come here, Sapnap? Was it to gloat? To talk about how I deserve this? To say that this is poetic justice, considering I was going to put Tommy in this very cell? Did you come to yell at me? Because you’ve been surprisingly quiet for being… you.”

Sapnap’s response was a humorless laugh. He reached up to tug at his hair in frustration. “What do you want me to say, Dream? My brother is in a fucking prison—and not just any prison, the motherfucking king of all prisons. This prison eats other prisons for breakfast! And he got here because he manipulated a _child_ and kept things that meant more than anything to people on the server locked up in some creepy fucking lair for _power_.” He went silent, hands falling to his sides as he continued, small and hurt, “You had Beckerson.”

“I did.”

“Were you going to try and control George and I?”

Dream’s look pierced through his very being and straight into his soul. He had always been able to do that with Sapnap, look right through him to see every secret and every fear that lay beneath. “I had no assurance that you would be on my side. You left me.”

“You betrayed us.”

“I did no such thing—”

“You dethroned George!”

“He wasn’t a good king—”

“ _You said you didn’t care!_ ”

Mouth snapping closed with an audible sound, Dream watched as Sapnap stood there, chest heaving and breaths coming in shallow gasps. The water that had been lining his eyes finally spilled over onto his cheeks, twin waterfalls carving craters of salt into his skin. “You said you didn’t care, Dream.”

For a moment, there was a crack in Dream’s expression. A whirlwind of hurt, terror, and agony passed across his features, twisted his mouth into a frown and making bright green eyes go misty with a haze of pain, but it was gone in an instant, smoothed over with sandpaper until Sapnap was staring at the emotionless mask he had been receiving this entire time. “When you care about something, it gives others power over you. I am never, _ever_ going to be someone who is powerless. Ever. If that means that I have to lose you, that I have to lose George, then so be it.”

Sam’s voice, tinny and slightly mechanical, came over a speaker from God knows where. “Time’s up, Sapnap.”

Sniffing, Sapnap pulled the one thing he had had in his inventory out and tossed it at the floor in front of Dream. A porcelain smile grinned up at the pair of them, the simple design somehow sinister looking against the obsidian floor. Sapnap walked backwards onto the stone platform that Sam had sent over as Dream slowly picked up the mask, flipping it over in his hands.

“When did I lose you?” Sapnap asked so whisper-quiet, he wasn’t sure Dream had heard.

But as Dream looked up, mask firmly attached, just as it had always been, he cocked his head to the side and asked, “Did you ever have me?”

**Author's Note:**

> i quite literally worked on this instead of any of my homework, so i really hope you liked it fjkdsfklds


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